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Showing posts from July, 2012

3 Ways to Save Money on Utilities

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Your water and electricity bills are usually the biggest bills in your house after you pay your rent. How can you lower them? Do you always have to pay so much? Well, here are three tips for cutting down on your utility bills and making the most of your paycheck. Unplug it   A huge waster of electricity is called phantom usage. This happens when you are not even using your appliances but they are still plugged in. Did you know that leaving your cell phone’s charger plugged into the power outlet, even when your phone is not charging, can be using electricity? This electricity usage is commonplace with all the things you leave plugged in. Unplug your appliances instead of just turning them off. You will lower your electricity bill and not ever miss anything! Less is more  Conserving water and electricity is not had. All you have to do is keep it on your mind. Turn off the water when you brush your teeth or do the dishes. Take shorter showers: that saves on both water and electricity by

Commercial Policy for Your Work Vehicle

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Whether you're delivering pizzas, hauling materials or chauffeuring clients, you may need to use your vehicle daily as part of your job. What you may not realize is that this use of your car has an effect on your auto insurance policy. Your risk category is higher when you use a car for business purposes, meaning that your rates will be higher than if you drove for pleasure alone. Moreover, insurance companies may deny claims for accidents that happen when the car is used for business purposes. How Risk Categories Affect Insurance Prices Insurers determine how much to charge for a policy by assessing a driver's risk. As a rule, people who spend more time behind the wheel will pay more for insurance because they're exposed to the most possible crashes. This means that drivers who commute to work pay more for insurance than those who work from home, and people who use their cars for business pay more than those who don't.  For many business uses, a personal insurance pol

MBA Diversity: A Constant Effort to Catch Up

For the past three decades, top business schools have hustled every way they can to improve levels of diversity on their campuses. They have aggressively recruited under-represented minorities (URM) and women. They have participated in pipeline programs like the Consortium . They have sponsored scholarships and funded fellowships. But two weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal article suggested that for many schools it's a one-step-forward, two-steps-back effort. Graduate business schools from Harvard and Stanford to the Consortium 17 have made praiseworthy progress among some segments (Asians, internationals), but insubstantial progress in others. "While many top programs boast that ethnic or racial minorities comprise a quarter or more of their student bodies," the Journal 's Melissa Korn wrote, "most of that population is Asian-American, a group that is statistically overrepresented at business schools when compared with their proportion of the U.S. population at l

How to Pay Bills while Broke

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Knowing how to pay bills when there is no money left can be unpleasant and stressful, if no plan is made.  As late fees appear, you could face legal action against you and loss of assets. In dire financial situations, it is imperative to prioritize payments and check options. You should think carefully about paying bills while broke and talk directly to your creditors. Learn how to pay bills when little or no money is available after expenses. Make Paying Bills a Top Priority Prioritizing bill payments should be your first step. Decide which is the most important bill that you must pay like utilities. Consider which services, if unpaid, would have the biggest impact on your lifestyle. For example, unpaid bills for credit cards can amount to late fees and bad credit records, but usually will not make you lose any assets like defaulting on mortgage payments. Consider goods or services that you can live without like Cable TV, gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, and expensive roaming

Forced-Ranking: Does It Hurt the Company?

It doesn't matter the level of experience--analyst, associate, vice president or managing director.  Finance professionals everywhere are haunted when they must schedule performance reviews. They endure them twice a year.  First, a mid-year review takes place in mid-July. It sets the stage for the rest of the year, since year-end reviews flow from the tone set at the July session. In late December and early January, everybody--unless time mismanagement permits some employees to be overlooked or unless the employee has just joined the company--goes through the end-of-year review. The second-year associate has an appraisal session, as well as the experienced sector head. The frenetic, marathon efforts of an entire calendar year are capsulized in one rambling meeting that often peters out after about 45 minutes. In financial services (at banks, boutiques, insurance companies, asset managers, trading firms, hedge funds and small broker/dealers), it's a way of life. CFN last year a

LIBOR in crisis

Right on the margins of media coverage of business you'll see frequent analysis of an esoteric corner of finance:  the Libor crisis. Or Libor scandal? Are we ready to term what has happened and what has surfaced an outright scandal? As much as ethics are studied in courses in business school and debated in op-ed columns and books, we turn the page and find yet another scandal, accusation of fraud, or sleight of hand by bankers or traders to manipulate markets.  Libor, this month. In previous months, we watched the insider-trading convictions involving hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam and former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta. Years after the scandals of Enron and Worldcom (and decades after Drexel Burnham and Ivan Boesky), there continues to be the periodic crisis of ethics in finance. For those not familiar with the nuances and mechanics of debt finance and interest-rate swaps, "Libor" refers to the London Interbank Offering Rate , a base cost of funding among

The Top Benefits of Having a Good Credit Score

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Good credit scores are helpful for a financial well being and should be checked at least once per year. There are many benefits from having good credit scores like lower interest rates, higher chances of loan approvals, and affordable insurance premiums. Keep a clean credit history, which determines credit scores, to take advantage of these benefits. Good credit reports can show financial institutions that a person is able to manage debt when requesting loans as an example. Interest Rates Consumers with good credit history can obtain low interest rates on credit cards, mortgages, and other types of loans. Most lending institutions check for credit reports to determine a person’s interest rates, if approved for a loan. Consumers with clean credit histories can get lower rates by showing lenders their ability to manage debt properly. Lower interest rates provide many savings on credit card purchases and payments for consumers with good credit scores. Financial Options Most financial inst

KLCI At Historical High

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KLCI recorded another record high of 1629! As we can see from the chart above, there was a reverse head and shoulder formed during the period of April to mid June 2012. On June 19th, there was a breakout from this bullish chart pattern and now heading towards the price target of 1646. While technical analysis tells you the possibility of near term price action, in a larger picture, we still rely on the fundamentals to give us a glimpse into the future. The Euro debt crisis is still on, the politicians have not come up with the best solution yet. The concern is the bond yield (or the cost of borrowing) for Greece, Span and other debt ridden countries are much higher than their counterparts like Germany, Sweden and Denmark. For example, the 10 yr bond yield for Germany is below 3% while Spain is closed to 7%. It is believed that those debt ridden countries cannot survive with such high cost of borrowing and that they are suggesting the richer EU countries like Germany and Denmark to sha